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Topic: Iron Kingdoms, Crafty Style :) (Read 3618 times)

I'm a big fan of the Iron Kingdoms rpg from Privateer Press, and with the release of Fantasy Craft coming up (and it can't come too soon in my opinion), I think that this setting would be perfect with these rules. So I have some questions about Fantasy Craft:

Ok, first, how are Fantasy Crafts going to handle monsters? Will there be a system similar to the NPC system in Spycraft? Or will a monster have a certain set of statistics which doesn't change. I feel that one of the important things in fantasy rpgs is for the heroes to advance until they will be able to take on a enemies they couldn't hope to defeat at lower levels. With the scaleable system in Spycraft, the enemies scale with the heroes, so they will always be difficult or easy. How will this be handled in Fantasy Craft? I really like the rules for designing NPCs in Spycraft, but I'm not sure if the scaling of the NPCs are suitable for most fantasy? Any thoughts? (That was the one thing I didn't like about the computer game Oblivion )

Second, will there be Expert and Master Classes in Fantasy Crafts?

I really want to try using the Spycraft rules for Iron Kingdoms.

Eirik

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"So far the shock of finding a disembodied, screaming head in a box, causes a greater response." -Result of Brainiac science experiment.

Ok, first, how are Fantasy Crafts going to handle monsters? Will there be a system similar to the NPC system in Spycraft? Or will a monster have a certain set of statistics which doesn't change. I feel that one of the important things in fantasy rpgs is for the heroes to advance until they will be able to take on a enemies they couldn't hope to defeat at lower levels. With the scaleable system in Spycraft, the enemies scale with the heroes, so they will always be difficult or easy. How will this be handled in Fantasy Craft? I really like the rules for designing NPCs in Spycraft, but I'm not sure if the scaling of the NPCs are suitable for most fantasy? Any thoughts? (That was the one thing I didn't like about the computer game Oblivion )

The current NPC system will be in place for FC as well, though we're including options for folks who want less (and more!) fluctuation among NPC stats.

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Second, will there be Expert and Master Classes in Fantasy Crafts?

Expert classes, yes. Master classes, no - at least, not in the core book.

If I wanted to convert a monster from D&D to Spycraft, using the NPC rules, how would I go about doing it? Is it as easy as taking the Challenge Rating of the monster and set it as the Threat Level in Spycraft (or Fantasy Craft) when making the stats? Challenge Rating works by scaling the monster with the average level of the PCs right. Same goes for Threat Level, if I'm not missing something. So are Threat Level and Challenge Rating roughly interchangeable?

E.

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"So far the shock of finding a disembodied, screaming head in a box, causes a greater response." -Result of Brainiac science experiment.

If I wanted to convert a monster from D&D to Spycraft, using the NPC rules, how would I go about doing it? Is it as easy as taking the Challenge Rating of the monster and set it as the Threat Level in Spycraft (or Fantasy Craft) when making the stats? Challenge Rating works by scaling the monster with the average level of the PCs right. Same goes for Threat Level, if I'm not missing something. So are Threat Level and Challenge Rating roughly interchangeable?

That's not quite how it works. When you stat a bad guy/monster with the spycraft NPC rules the 'hardness' of said NPC is measured only by the XP total value of it. At this point most of the NPCs abilities are purely roman numerals, useless in play.

The Treat Level of any mission is based on the PCs, it is the total of their levels divided by 5. This is then used to convert the NPC roman numerals for base attack/defense/saves etc into actual numbers which will be then balanced against the party.

The end result is an NPC which can be thrown against a party of any level. I very much like this because it completely abstracts out level.

As for converting standard monsters, I believe somewhere there has been an implication that FantasyCraft will include guidance on this front.

Indeed. I'm very curious about Fantasy Craft, and from what I've seen so far with 4th edition D&D, I'm not very impressed. But it depends on what Privateer Press (makers of Iron Kingdoms) are going to do. They're on a "wait and see" stance. Rumour says that the rules for D&D 3.5 wasn't really such a good fit for that setting from the beginning, and I believe that 4e will make it even more unsuitable. I think Crafty Games and Privateer Press should get together. Crafty supplies the rules, Privateer Press supplies the setting, and we have my dream rpg.

E.

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"So far the shock of finding a disembodied, screaming head in a box, causes a greater response." -Result of Brainiac science experiment.

As a note I did start to do some Iron Kingdoms stuff an age ago - though I put it on hold mostly once I heard of Origin of the Species (i.e. wait for the fantasy one), I suppose it's even more on hold now that there's FC coming out.

I e-mailed Privateer Press about the status of Iron Kingdoms rpg, and they said that they're on a "wait and see stance". Basically, they're waiting to get to read the new rules from Wizards of the Coast. But I just feel that the Spycraft rules would be much better, from what I've seen of the 4th edition D&D rules so far. Privateer Press currently have a great setting, but they're basically at the mercy of Wizards of the Coast if they stick to D&D.